


Faces of the Witch

by reminiscence



Category: Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry
Genre: Freeverse, Gen, Poetry, ffn challenge: diversity writing challenge, poetry collection, word count: 1001-1500 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 19:26:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8460118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reminiscence/pseuds/reminiscence
Summary: They never were a truth. Always a lie: a stain to be hidden, a doll with too many layers to be displayed and a ghost to forever haunt.





	1. Lion

He is the child they don’t want to exist.

He is the child they tuck away into corners and then tuck those corners in so one will have to lift the tablecloth and then smooth it out and then shine a torch-light and not just that pretty chandelier that dangles from the ceiling before they can see the stain that is him and then they’ll cringe away. It’s the sort of stain that’ll be there no matter how much they polish the wood and lather it in paint and varnish, once they see it they’ll know and they’ll never forget. It’ll be a burn, a scar that never goes away, a birthmark, a tattoo that marks them, some psychic link –

But he is too young to do a thing.  
He can’t dance with the shadows until their embraces  
smother him and he can’t scurry about the edges

out of sight where if he is seen he’s just a floating scotoma that heralds the approaching migraine except the migraine never comes – but the migraine will come because he’s the cat in the bag,  
the skeleton in the closet

And skeletons fall out of closets,  
Cat claws tear through water skins  
and the truth tumbles out

Out out out like sand in a broken time glass and it’s exactly like sand from a broken time glass and the time glass has broken because the time for all these secrets has run out. The sand spirals into the ocean and is swept away before they can make any semblance of a shore, a beach. There isn’t enough blood to quell the volcano’s heart and there isn’t enough time left to pad on the covers and tape them down so that fateful strand of stray wind won’t knock them off and expose them and burn that brand into everyone’s hearts and minds in such a way so that it can’t be covered nor forgotten again

And like the blood in a severed artery  
he gushes out with the truth  
and splashes on the rocks, like the foam  
of that sand mixed with the sea that eternally drowns, eternally dances,  
eternally drowns.


	2. Sayo

She remembers.  
She isn’t old enough to forget.  
Old enough to ignore.

She’s aware enough as they rip her face right off  
and give her a new one.

She’s aware enough when they scrape out every bit of skin that doesn’t quite look right and rearrange the organs underneath and they can do anything: make her into a kitten without claws or a bat with deep neck-crunching fangs to gore or a stain on the wall all over again or maybe they can even erase the stain that’s her existence…

After all, they’ve already erased her identity.

It doesn’t take her long to think of herself as a girl. It takes a lot longer, when she learns and recalls, to think of herself as a boy again. She remembers the fall: the way the wind whistled her funeral song and she remembers the pain that burns and burdens her afterwards. She remembers how she fell apart like a broken doll and was put back together: imperfect and weak, but slowly living, slowly growing stronger, slowly growing more whole –

Except she’s not whole, no not whole at all but a broken doll that’s been patched together and not so very well. She’s broken furniture, a broken display piece that was too ugly for words even before she broke and was tucked away into a corner and covered with the heavily folded table cloth

And now the curtain’s pulled back  
and no amount of prodding at her skin will fix  
the image in the mirror behind.


	3. Shannon and Kanon

Those one set of clothes never really fit.

Don’t fit her.  
Don’t fit him.  
They’re a pendulum that swing  
and they’re pushed from either end,  
Him,  
Her,  
until they can find the middle ground  
they swing past, again and again

But they won’t. They won’t.  
Instead, they swing only further on

Swing swing swing until they can’t even guess where the middle point might be, where that blind spot’s gone –

They just swing and swing until they’re two entirely different beings, different lives, who can never converge.

And then they face each other: through the mirror, through the doors, through the words of others and on the battlefield. They face each other and they fight because they share their existence and their time and only one of them can emerge the victor in the end: only one of them can continue on. They can swing all they like but the swinging will never end and they’ll only get further apart and then ram into each other with even greater force and one day that force will shatter the pendulum mid-swing and they’ll both crack, both break –

As though they aren’t broken enough already, pitiful them who can’t even find a pair of clothes that fit right.


	4. Beatrice

She is the queen in a castle that can’t see its queen.

Is it the tar, she wonders, that has grown so thick over all the windows and doors?  
Is it the song of water-birds that are so loud and lying and beautiful?  
Is it the sea itself, that calls the elves home when she’s no fair elf  
and carries her stories: her lies, her truths, her tales, her plans  
wayward…and would they ever find their way?

She is the queen of a castle that glitters gold  
and yet what use is that gold?  
What use is the castle?

She’ll turn it into her stage instead: the grand finale for this cursed life of hers and she’ll be the witch-queen: the witch no mortal man can kill, the queen to fair to look away from and too powerful to resist. She’ll be the dark queen of the dawn that Galadriel herself turned astray from and she has the One Ring already: those golden bars that lie in slumber and let them dash around like mice in a cage, let them try and solve her little puzzle and see if they can spare themselves their fate.

She already knows how the tale will end.

Blood will dance with the waves that lap around the shore once more, no matter if they pass or fail.

The first die will be ignored. She’ll roll. Six people will die the first night and there’s no escaping that. they’ll scream to the gulls in the morning and then they’ll move:

Toward her?  
Away from her?

There are many winding threads in the tale she’s weaved  
but she’s the witch, and there’s never a happy ending  
for the witch.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, c4 - poetry collection centered around a specific character


End file.
